


Faded Summer Days

by Ffwydriad



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-11 01:23:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12311868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: In long abandoned halls, Legolas thinks back.





	Faded Summer Days

The halls are grey, now, dead trees and cold stone that used to be glimmering, white and green and splendid gold. It's just dead, here. Faded.

 

He thinks back, sometimes, to those summer days, when he was a child. He still is a child, in many ways, by all the old Elven laws, but something has changed. He used to use those laws as the final decider. Maybe he has spent too much time among humans, for they all see him as an adult. For humans, all you need to grow up is time, and war. Nothing like the Elven customs, but perhaps that's because of their so shortened lives.

 

No more Elves live in this city. No more Elves in all this land, he thinks, for they all left, long ago. He is the last Elf in the west. Before, what could hardly have been years, he would have said he was not alone, for while she had given up her grace to live a mortal life, you can not give up your status as an Elf, as not and never human.

 

He'd danced with her, and him, so long ago yet barely a century, in these halls, on sweet summer days now faded, like the halls themselves. They'd danced, and played, and lived, a proper Elven childhood, with the sort of things that humanity never does as children.

 

Aragorn had never been a child, by human standards, he knew that. For all he was raised amongst the Elves, he had such human notions. After Arwen had grown up, two souls melding in to one despite all protests, he didn't understand, why they had to leave childish things behind. As she grew mortal, she didn't seem to understand either, but perhaps there lies the difference, between humanity and Elvenkind. 

 

It didn't matter. He would never be one to intrude on them. 

 

And now, now they're dead, the both of them, old and faded and grey like all the world now seems to be, locked away in stone and the cold of death. He should have left this place, so long ago, but he chose to stay and bears that weariness of a world not meant for him to live in.

 

"Ready to head back?"

 

He turns to look at his companion, who leans impatiently at the gate. "Just a moment," he says, wondering how sad he seems. "I wanted to say goodbye."

 

"I may appreciate the craftsmanship, best I've ever seen out of Elves, but it's just a hall, lad. You're off to see the people who lived here soon, aren't you?"

 

No, he thinks, but yes, but no. He has no ties to the halls, truly, Gimli is right, they're just stone and trees and hints of magic. He'll be off to live with Elves again, in that never-aging land, but it's not the hall he says goodbye to.

 

No. It's the memories of dancing here, the three of them, their younger selves, so alien compared to the versions he'd seen slowly aging, slowly dying, and yet so close to his heart he'd never find it strange. It was always them, by his side, no matter how far away they came from their games here, long ago.

 

Slowly, sadly, ever calm, he says goodbye to those faded summer days, and turns aside.


End file.
